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Today's Topics:
1. Chinese cyber agency recommends review of Intel products sold
in China (Stephen Loosley)
2. Patent Drops (Stephen Loosley)
3. Teach portfolios without the lingo (Tom Worthington)
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Message: 1
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2024 23:20:07 +1030
From: Stephen Loosley <[email protected]>
To: "link" <[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] Chinese cyber agency recommends review of Intel
products sold in China
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Chinese Cyber Association Calls for Review of Intel Products Sold in China
By Eduardo Baptista Reuters Oct. 16, 2024
https://www.usnews.com/news/technology/articles/2024-10-16/chinese-cyber-agency-recommends-review-of-intel-products-sold-in-china
BEIJING (Reuters) -Intel products sold in China should be subject to a security
review, the Cybersecurity Association of China (CSAC) said on Wednesday,
alleging the U.S. chipmaker has "constantly harmed" the country's national
security and interests.
While CSAC is an industry group rather than a government body, it has close
ties to the Chinese state and the raft of accusations against Intel, published
in a long post on its official WeChat account, could trigger a security review
from China's powerful cyberspace regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of
China (CAC).
Intel and the CAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The
company's shares were down 2.7% in U.S. premarket trading amid a broad tech
sell-off following a disappointing update from chip equipment maker ASML.
"It is recommended that a network security review is initiated on the products
Intel sells in China, so as to effectively safeguard China's national security
and the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese consumers," CSAC said.
Last year, CAC barred domestic operators of key infrastructure from buying
products made by U.S. memory chipmaker Micron Technology Inc after deeming the
company's products had failed its network security review.
https://www.rappler.com/technology/china-fails-micron-products-security-review/
A similar security review on Intel products could negatively impact the
company's revenues, over a quarter of which came from China last year.
BACKDOOR ALLEGATIONS
The allegations come at a time when China is dealing with a U.S.-led effort to
restrict its access to crucial chipmaking equipment and components, in what
Washington calls a bid to halt the modernization of China's military.
"Relationships between the U.S. and China are fragile and the more talk about
restrictions on trade and tariffs, the more likely the other side will
retaliate in a tit-for-tat situation," said Dan Coatsworth, investment analyst
at AJ Bell.
CSAC in its post accuses Intel chips, including Xeon processors used for
artificial intelligence tasks, of carrying several vulnerabilities, concluding
that Intel "has major defects when it comes to product quality, security
management, indicating that it is extremely irresponsible attitude towards
customers."
The industry group goes on to state that operating systems embedded in all
Intel processors are vulnerable to backdoors created by the U.S. National
Security Agency (NSA).
"This poses a great security threat to the critical information infrastructures
of countries all over the world, including China...the use of Intel products
poses a serious risk to national security." CSAC said.
A ban, even if temporary, on Intel products could further tighten the supply of
AI chips in the Chinese market, which has struggled to find viable alternatives
to cutting-edge products from Nvidia which dominate globally but are now banned
from export to China.
Intel this year secured orders for its Xeon processors from several Chinese
state-linked agencies for use in AI work, according to a Reuters review of
public tenders.
(Reporting by Eduardo Baptista; Additional reporting by Arsheeya Bajwa in
Bengaluru; Editing by Louise Heavens and Mark Potter)
--
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2024 23:38:02 +1030
From: Stephen Loosley <[email protected]>
To: "link" <[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] Patent Drops
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Patent Drop: October 14, 2024
https://www.thedailyupside.com/newsletter/pd-october-14-2024/
Happy Monday and welcome to Patent Drop!
Google?s patent for a streamlined video-generation diffusion model highlights
the costs and benefits of creating a high-quality AI movie generator. Plus:
Snap may have a plan to make AR glasses lighter, and Mastercard might use
blockchain to straighten out transaction records.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Google Goes Hollywood
The tech industry is in a mad dash to make generative AI bigger and better, and
Google might be looking to stake its claim in IP before it?s too late.
The company wants to patent a system for ?generative videos using diffusion
models.? A diffusion model refines data over multiple iterations, making these
models a good fit for generating image and audio data.
Google claims its system can create longer videos of ?higher perceptual
quality? than other systems, which typically lack ?temporal coherence between
the input video and the generated frames.?
Unlike conventional systems, which generate videos by predicting frames one at
a time, this tech models entire videos using ?3D video architecture,? a process
that treats a video as a three-dimensional structure rather than a flat frame,
and models multiple frames simultaneously within that structure. This makes
videos more natural-looking and coherent.
Google notes that this model is trained on both images and video, giving it a
wider pool of high-quality, diverse data to learn from, and improving its
performance. Google claims this training method is more computationally
efficient, as it helps a model reach its peak performance more quickly. This
tech also saves energy with simpler calculations and better memory storage
techniques, Google notes.
Tons of companies are racing to build an AI video-generation engine that
actually works. OpenAI has been developing a text-to-video model, Sora, which
it began teasing back in February. Earlier this month, Meta announced Movie
Gen, which can create clips from text prompts and videos from custom images.
(Neither of these models are publicly available.)
In August, TikTok?s parent company ByteDance launched a video-generation app
called Jimeng AI for users based in China. And Google, of course, isn?t left
out of the fun: The company unveiled Veo, its own AI video generator, which it
will bring to YouTube Shorts in 2025 to generate clips up to six seconds long.
Why are these companies so interested in building high-powered content
generators? While at least part of the answer is simply to see if they?re
capable, a larger reason could be to draw in more creators and larger
audiences, said Thomas Randall, advisory director at Info-Tech Research Group.
?They're all competing to get the largest audience, because that's where
they'll get enough data to use for advertisement revenue. That's a huge source
of income for them,? Randall said. Because of this, making these experiences
seamless and engaging could present major revenue opportunities.
However, like any AI model, these video generators cost an astronomical amount
of resources to create, said Randall, with likely ?billions of dollars in
total? going toward power, data center demands, and manpower for research.
Dollar amount aside, access to high-quality data can also mean the difference
between realistic outputs and uncanny valley ones.
?To make content useful and valuable, it needs to have the right kind of data
going into it,? said Randall.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Snap Lightens AR
Snap may want to lighten the load on its AR glasses.
The social media firm is seeking to patent ?external computer vision of an
eyewear device.? Snap?s tech relies on external devices for motion tracking and
processing of AR experiences for higher-quality interactions and reduced
computational needs.
Interaction with sensors in typical smart glasses is ?not very intuitive and
has a very steep learning curve,? Snap said. ?Also, performing image processing
to detect hand gestures involves multiple machine learning models, which
consumes a great deal of hardware resources of the smart glasses.?
Snap?s tech gives the job of movement and gesture detection to a user?s
smartphone. The user?s phone and the glasses are in constant communication, so
the visuals in the eyewear correspond with the users? movements and
interactions with AR objects in their vicinity.
In the patent?s primary example, a user would set up their phone so that its
front camera captures their movements. Those movements would then be mimed in
real time by an AR avatar pictured in the user?s display.
Snap isn?t the only company that has sought to lighten the load on AR headsets.
Meta has filed a number of patents that aim to move processing and tracking
responsibilities to external devices. For any company developing AR, a sleeker,
longer-last form factor is the ?end goal,? said Jake Maymar, AI strategist at
The Glimpse Group.
?If it costs almost no energy to run the actual glasses and everything is
offset to an external phone, you can have very lightweight batteries ? and the
cost of manufacturing the glasses can be very inexpensive,? he said.
Cost and wearability remain the two biggest hurdles in making true AR glasses a
reality, said Maymar. Both Snap and Meta unveiled their latest smart glasses
last month, and both face those issues. While Snap?s new glasses in the
Spectacles line are more powerful than previous models, they?re also quite
large and bulky. Meanwhile, Meta?s Project Orion AR glasses are slightly
sleeker, but reportedly cost $10,000 per unit to make.
Creating a lighter and cheaper headset may only be half the battle, said
Maymar. To get people to actually use these devices, they need to seamlessly
integrate into a user?s existing tech and everyday activities, he said. This is
where a company like Apple ? which only jumped into artificial reality at the
start of this year with the Vision Pro ? may have a leg-up.
Even if Apple isn?t first, if the company puts out AR glasses, Maymar said,
?ultimately, Apple is going to win. Just think: How many people have iPhones?
That's a pretty clear indicator.?
BLOCKCHAIN
Mastercard?s Record Keeper
Mastercard wants to set the record straight.
The credit card giant filed a patent application for ?transaction processing
with complete cryptographic auditability.? This adds a layer of trackability
and transparency to transactions using a blockchain ledger.
Mastercard?s tech aims to give a user or business auditability of all their
transactions in the event of a dispute, as well as ?eliminate or strongly
mitigate the possibility of the record being tampered with.?
When a transaction is requested between two parties, a ?third party? moderator
is used to verify the details, and a digital signature is generated as a means
of verification. The server that?s processing the transaction then creates its
own digital signatures, adding a layer of cryptographic verification to ensure
the transaction?s validity.
Once the transaction is confirmed, both the digital signatures and the details
of the transaction itself are stored on a blockchain, ensuring that the record
is secure, tamper-proof and immutable.
Mastercard is far from new to the blockchain landscape. The company has filed
tons of patents that use blockchain both for cryptocurrency and other use
cases, such as ticket tracking and fraud detection. It?s following pace with
fintech and finance firms like PayPal, Visa, and JPMorgan Chase, all of which
have filed patents for blockchain-related tech.
This patent plays to blockchain?s biggest strengths ? immutability,
transparency, and security ? without being explicitly related to
cryptocurrency, said Jordan Gutt, Web 3.0 lead at The Glimpse Group.
?It?s using the best of blockchain technology,? said Gutt. ?Mastercard wanted
to find a use case for blockchain that could actually help them in solving
real-world problems.?
This invention alone presents several potential use cases, Gutt said. In one
example, the filing discusses its capabilities in real estate transactions,
such as escrow payments, which are ?usually slow, expensive, and error-prone,?
Gutt said. But this tech can provide an additional layer of trust and
transparency in the purchase of any hot-ticket item, he said.
And with the amount of purchase disputes that a company like Mastercard deals
with on a regular basis, an immutable ledger could help merchants and customers
easily track where payments went awry. ?This patent could help either party
without extra time and effort,? he said.
?It seems like a great use case, and in the future, could save them money on a
lot of different auditing tasks and reduce fraud,? said Gutt
--
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2024 08:44:42 +1100
From: Tom Worthington <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] Teach portfolios without the lingo
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"
A podcast from NZ on the use of e-portfolios for teaching, featuring me:
https://podcast.mahara.org/2018360/episodes/15833547
This is from the people who maintain the NZ Mahara free open source
podcasting tool. https://mahara.org/
It is often used alongside the Australian Moodle learning management
system. https://moodle.org/
Few of the millions of people who use Moodle and Mahara around the world
realize these are free and where they come from. I have had Australians
refuse to believe it.
--
Tom Worthington http://www.tomw.net.au
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